Michigan State University - Red Cedar Log Yearbook (East Lansing, MI)

Page 15 text:

PRING QUARTER BEGAN AS A CLIMATIC HANGOVER from a rough winter. Snow was dirty, disappointing, and melting. Travel was almost amphibious. On your way to south campus you paused on the bridge to watch a swollen Red Cedar engulf the bandshell and canoe shelter. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow bothered the impervious ducks. You weren ' t aware, until you stopped to look, that a young and vital season was here to stay awhile. Everyone talked about it. Four years you watched Spring brighten up everything on campus including yourself, and every year it was new to you. Profs struggled in vain to keep your thoughts from wander- ing out of second floor Berkey Hall to the little babushka-and-saddle-shoe freshman bound for the grill. When the lecture was over, you looked down on your notes to find one comprehensible sentence and twenty or more meaningless doodles. There were long periods when you would stretch out beneath the trees to read, rest, eat strawberry ice cream cones, or talk with your girl. You liked to be outside because everything smelled good and clean, because all about you asserted the world a better place than it had ever been. From that day on, you beat a path to the river. The hard-nosed business world didn ' t exist. You were young. Dancing at the Mardi Gras was often something of a problem. Either you couldn ' t see out of your costume, or move your arm, or sit down. There were plenty of laughs and the big attendance proved most of you thought it well worth the effort. A regular year of school was just about wrapped up in class books and machine scored tests. There was a feeling that ran high in every living group at State, during the closing days of Spring quarter. It was time for celebration, time for Water Carnival! For weeks every sort of float was conceived and fe- verishly worked on. You watched nearly two score of them towed down the river beneath the spotlights. They were aesthetically pleasing, earthy, humorous, the best and near-best. One thing certain, they were the result of many hands, many minds. They were an expression of joy that the lonely, long travail was ended. Spring quarter left amid the glitter of paint and pageantry, in a celebration which was exclusively part of State ' s traditions.